The pirate that costs 300 euros from the La Colmena pastry shop

Barcelona and Vilanova i la GeltrúThe five windows of La Colmena pastry shop in Barcelona (Plaça del Àngel, 12) are decorated with chocolate monkeys, chicks, and feathers. One window, the corner one, is under construction and has its shutter closed. When it's finished, they'll decorate it with Easter cakes too. In the past, says Josep Maria Roig, the patriarch of the current family of pastry chefs at La Colmena, people used to queue up to see what they'd put out, and the city police had to keep order. "Now there aren't any godparents left to give Easter cakes as gifts, people don't stroll around anymore, and they're sold on supermarket shelves and at gas stations," says a mischievously Josep Maria, a great expert on sweet traditions, as evidenced by his extensive library on pastry. He knows so much that he's preparing a book, but we'll talk about that later; now we're talking about the award. La Colmena has won the Best Easter Cake contest, which this year has reached its fifth edition, and is organized by the Sr y Sra Cake agency.

Let's look for him in the shop window next to the door. He's displayed as if welcoming us. It's a pirate parrot, with his eye patch, a hook, and a small chocolate egg in his talons. "It's Jack Sparrow, the captain played by Johnny Depp in the movie." Pirates of the Caribbean"Explains Xavi Arévalo, head of the workshop and creator of the winning monkey. While he is attaching spheres and eggs to each other to prepare other monkeys, next to him Toni Roig, son of Josep Maria, is making meringues, which are very traditional in La Colmenaas well as the candies of a thousand and one flavors, which they prepare just as they did in the 17th century.

Premium quality chocolate

We continue with the chocolate parrot. It weighs four kilos and they carefully hold it with both hands. It measures about fifty centimeters, and it's already sold. I ask them the price, and they first tell me that the chocolate they use is top quality, organic, and that the price they pay for it is high. If you add to that the many days of work they've dedicated to it, it all comes to 300 euros, which is what the winning Easter cake costs. "I started preparing it in February, the skeleton, and then little by little," says Arévalo. The parrot's structure is made with six chocolate eggs, and the rest are half-spheres that make up the body parts. The head of the La Colmena workshop decided on a pirate parrot because he thinks it's timeless, that the theme never goes out of style. "The same goes for the underwater world and space, which are always popular." On the contrary, this year they know that the Easter cakes children are asking for are those based on the TV series. Stranger Things"Even children who haven't seen the series are ordering them, because they're so young." In any case, the fact is that this week, at La Colmena, they've stopped making chocolate Easter cakes—they must have already made them all—and are focusing on Cristinas, that is, the sugar buns documented since the 15th century.

Long ago, many years ago, the Easter cakes were made life-sized. A relative of La Colmena used to make them. That's when those queues formed in front of the pastry shop window, which still has a different name on its paper wrappers. "We used to say..." The AbellaBut during the dictatorship, we received a fine for having the name in Catalan; so we changed it, and when we tried to resume operations, it turned out it was already registered, among others by Rumasa, and we couldn't get it back," says the father. That's why the wrappers say "La Colmena. Formerly L'Abella." And they will continue doing so next year as well, when it will be 100 years since the Roig family has been running the same pastry shop. "Before, the Roigs were in L'Estrella pastry shop, on Nou de la Rambla street"We were there from 1916 to 1932; in 1927, the brothers Josep and Francesc Roig Manubens, along with their grandfather and uncle, took over La Colmena, and they divided the tasks: one in the workshop, the other in the shop," explains Josep Maria. It was Josep who made the life-sized Easter cakes, always very creative.

Josep Maria Roig is writing a book about the history of all this, in collaboration with María Ángeles Pérez Samper, Professor of Modern History. "Easter cakes were originally made with crystallized sugar, and also with brittle; the first Easter cakes were a type of cake, a sponge cake decorated with icing sugar, sugar eggs, and sugar plumes." He will also share the information that pastry shops began in the mid-19th century; before that, they were drugstores and, later, confectioneries. "When we started, we sold sugared almonds, candies, puffed pastries, syrups, cream nougat; candied fruit, and we also brewed coffee."

The candies at La Colmena deserve a proper introduction because "they're unique; we make them with the same 17th-century recipe." That is to say, the ingredients are sugar, extract of the desired flavor, and water. And nothing else. They're all displayed in glass jars, which take up a large part of one of the main counters, and are grouped by flavor: fennel, thyme, lemon, orange, pomegranate, honey, and many more. "We make them daily; they were already making them at the drugstore; remember that Peter IV used to take aniseed sugared almonds on his expeditions, so the tradition of sweets in our house is very old," says Josep Maria, who could spend hours explaining interesting facts: "The space that is La Colmena was formerly the old prison. And lastly, the Roig brothers' pastry shop passed into the name of Josep Maria's father, who was an orphan. From father to son, and now to Toni Roig, who listens attentively to his father while continuing to make meringues, candies, and also one of the most traditional desserts of the pastry shop and of Barcelona: the 'empotrados,' made with ricotta cheese."Jon Cake Garcia told us they should have become Mercè's dessert because of its age, but It is also true that those they have invented, with figs"We also sell them very well," concludes Toni Roig.

Baker Jordi Morera, winner of the Golden Wheat award, received the prize for best Cristina

The sugar bun from the La Espiga de Oro bakery in Vilanova i la Geltrú, the traditional Cristina, is the best, according to the jury members of the Best Easter Mona competition. The baker Jordi Morera, who is in charge of Espiga de Oro, prepares them with too much sourdough and spicesHe is one of the great defenders of traditional sweets. In his bakery, he also makes breads from a thousand and one flours, which he grows himself and grinds in the mill he has in his workshop.